Meta-everything

[dsrtao]

A comment on Hacker News really resonated with me.

"How can people walk around not giving a f--- about how things actually work? I really just can't comprehend that lack of thirst for knowledge."

This.

That.

Yes, I know that I will never know everything. And yes, I have particular interests and sometimes I grow bored with a particular area. But whenever I am awake, I am looking at how things are and how things can be, whys and wherefores and possibilities. How can there be any other state of consciousness? It's bizarre to hear someone say "I don't want to know" in any other context than "joking" or "busy".

Comments

[mangosteen]

It's bizarre to hear someone say "I don't want to know" in any other context than "joking" or "busy".

In that last word of that last sentence, you nailed it.

If a person feels perpetually busy, and therefore feels they have to live at a higher level of abstraction than "how stuff works", then it follows that they will be distinctly non-curious about their environment.

As an example, Apple has been profiting from people "just wanting stuff to work" for a very long time.

[dsrtao]

I admit a likelihood that you are partially correct, but I don't think those concepts are exactly congruent.

"I want it to work" is not the same as "I don't want to know about it".

In fact, the more I really want things to work, the more I feel I have to know about them, because Apple and Microsoft and you-name-it-authority-figure have always treated me like a second-class citizen. Knowing is my only defense, because someday it will stop working, and voodoo only takes you so far.

[mangosteen]

"I want it to work" is not the same as "I don't want to know about it".

I may be splitting hairs here, but "just wanting stuff to work" is different from "I want it to work". Think external vs. internal locus of control.

[dsrtao]

I think you're saying that "just wanting stuff to work" is like saying "I want someone else to fix it for me". Am I correct?

[mangosteen]

Hm. I think that's partially correct, and somewhat unrelated.

"Just want stuff to work" means a few things, here. There's an assumption that it is natural for stuff to just work, and that stuff not working is an exceptional, unforseen, and unforseeable circumstance... if it breaks, it should be fixed. It's a black box that should work. It's not about "someone fixing it for me" as much as "This does not do what it's supposed to. Restore it to what it should be."

[dsrtao]

How is that supposed to happen without someone who knows what's going on intervening?

Perhaps we should try some field other than computing, since we both are highly involved?